Trust is essential in business, and that includes trusting your lead generation website to tell you everything it can about your customers. Unfortunately, a large number of Internet marketers don’t get the full story from their websites because they ignore the critical step of validating and tracking their sales leads.

We here at Straight North have discovered that nearly half of all website conversions are not sales leads, so it’s crucial that marketers drill deeper into their data. Unless you validate and track your lead generation website’s conversions, you won’t be able to trust what it tells you. This guide explains how you can regain trust in your website.

Speculation can lead to some bad decisions — ask any stockbroker. When it comes to Internet marketing, you need as much information as possible to make as informed decisions as possible, considering decisions based on speculation introduce risk into the equation. However, too many Internet marketers end up speculating about their lead generation without knowing it. That’s because those marketers don’t take the time to validate the leads created by their websites.

Google analytics data only tracks conversions on a website, even though nearly half of conversions are not true sales leads. Whether they’re job applications or incomplete form submissions, these non-sales conversions skew the numbers and can fool marketers into thinking they have created more leads than they have. Without knowing how many actual sales leads they’ve generated and where they came from, marketers are, in effect, speculating on the success of their websites. That can lead to some bad decisions that otherwise could have been avoided had they taken time to validate the leads.

The following presentation breaks down the reasons why lead validation needs to be part of any Internet marketing campaign, to help you be more informed — and keep you from speculating.

With the incredible advances in technology, the modern marketer needs both art and science to win. As the infographic below shows, you’ll needs skills in writing, graphics, and social media as well as hard science skills such as analytics and performance tracking to be successful.

But having the right mix of both art and science are skills in short supply. So if you’re a traditional marketer or ad man, brush up on analytics, budgeting and operational prowess. And those of you who are happier with Excel and CRM’s like salesforce.com, think about picking up copywriting, email marketing and photography techniques.

Regardless of which camp you’re in, you’ll need all of the skills below to be successful in today’s marketing department.

“Let’s say you have $1,000,000 tied up in your little company and suddenly your advertising isn’t working and sales are going down. And everything depends on it. Your future depends on it, your family’s future depends on it, other people’s families depend on it . . . Now, what do you want from me? Fine writing? Or do you want to see the sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?” – Rosser Reeves

“Yes, I sell people things they don’t need. I can’t, however, sell them something they don’t want. Even with advertising. Even if I were of a mind to.” – John O’Toole

“The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell.” – Jay Abraham

“You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.” – Zig Ziglar

“Loving your customer boils down to one thing – creating an almost fanatic sense of loyalty in your customer such that they wouldn’t think of buying from anyone else.” – Brad Antin / CommonSenseMarketing.com

“Your offer can make a hero or a bum out of the finest, slickest string of words you ever turned out.” – Eugene Schwartz

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.” – Samuel Johnson

“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” – Mark Twain

“Every word, sentence, and headline should have one specific purpose – to lead your potential customer to your order page.” – Shelley Lowery

“People go through life with their minds only half turned on, except when they are promised an adequate reward for their full attention. Ordinarily their attitude toward nearly everything they see, read and
experience is – so what?” – Maxwell Sackheim

“The written word is the strongest source of power in the entire universe.” – Gary Halbert

“Don’t underestimate the value of beginning a headline by naming the people you want to reach.” – John Caples

“Everyone – no exceptions – responds to well-written, persuasive, emotionally based copy. Not everyone can write it, that’s why copywriters are often paid so much, but no one can escape its power.” – Joe Vitale

“Before a test is run, you have to have a set of logical arguments in favor of each ad tested. After, you learn which set of arguments is stronger.” – Walter Weintz

“Clearly in today’s skeptical environment, people buy people long before they buy products or services. Even with the best intentions, people often do not buy simply because sales professionals do a lousy job of positioning or presenting themselves before the sale takes place.” – Richard Weylman

“If you don’t get noticed, you don’t have anything. You just have to be noticed, but the art is in getting noticed naturally, without screaming or without tricks.” – Leo Burnett

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him or her and sells itself.” – Peter Drucker

“Delay is the death of the sale.” – Gary Halbert

Why Is It? (a/k/a The Advertising Poem)
A man wakes up after sleeping
under an advertised blanket,
on an advertised mattress,
pulls off advertised pajamas,
bathes in an advertised shower,
shaves with an advertised razor,
brushes his teeth with advertised toothpaste,
washes with advertised soap,
puts on advertised clothes,
drinks a cup of advertised coffee,
drives to work in an advertised car,
and then, refuses to advertise,
believing it doesn’t pay.
Later when business is poor,
he advertises it for sale.
Why is it?